“It has long been suspected that many of those mysterious abandonments were at least partly triggered by ecological problems: people inadvertently destroying the environmental resources on which their societies depended. This suspicion of unintended ecological suicide—ecocide—has been confirmed by discoveries made in recent decades by archaeologists, climatologists, historians, paleontologists, and palynologists (pollen scientists). The processes through which past societies have undermined themselves by damaging their environments fall into eight categories, whose relative importance differs from case to case: deforestation and habitat destruction, soil problems (erosion, salinization, and soil fertility losses), water management problems, overhunting, overfishing, effects of introduced species on native species, human population growth, and increased per-capita impact of people.”

I’ve not previously heard Jared Diamond speak so I cannot attest in advance to his personal charisma as a public speaker. Yet other invited speakers in the USF Lecture series whom I have heard within the recent past have all been uniformly excellent (namely, Cornel West, John Zerzan, and Mira Nair).